


Things You Learn

by semele



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-28
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 12:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1107031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/pseuds/semele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first person to ever call her a Mudblood is a Hufflepuff.</p><p>(Prompt: <i>Hermione gets sorted into Slytherin and learns the meaning of the word 'mudblood' much sooner</i>, by lynzie914.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things You Learn

The first person to ever call her a Mudblood is a Hufflepuff.

Hermione knows what it means, of course. The whole summer before she came here, she read, and read and read – just to be sure she'd get it all right. Then she got to Hogwarts, and read some more; not that he helped much.

What she knows is: many Hufflepuffs are old money, so old and respectable that they can afford to be kind. They'd never call their own Muggleborns names, but Slytherins are another thing entirely; Slytherins are upstarts. They're rich, rude and annoying, which for some people is worse than eating babies. Hermione knows all this, but somehow the knowledge doesn't comfort her at all.

She cries herself silly in the bathroom, then wipes her face and, with her head held high, she goes back to the dungeons to work on her homework. 

“If they call you a Mudblood,” she tells herself, because this is what her parents would say, “it's them who's stupid, not you.”

***

Pansy calls her a Mudblood in their second year, when person after person gets petrified on school corridor.

“Well, you're a Mudblood, so I guess you should be worried,” she says casually, as if this was just a word like any other word.

For a second, Hermione is speechless – her fellow Slytherins usually tread carefully around her, determined to avoid conflict in the common room. The only person who doesn't really care is Draco Malfoy, but Slytherin dungeon is big enough for them to successfully ignore each other, so it rarely comes to words between them.

Pansy doesn't even notice what she let slip, much too preoccupied with the blood-curdling story she has to tell, and Hermione's stunned silence doesn't bother her at all. Pansy's voice is devoid of malice, and no one even notices the strained expression on Hermione's face when she gets up and heads to the library. No one follows her.

Three weeks later, as she's pounding on the Headmaster's door, yelling “Basilisk! Basilisk!” until the gargoyle lets her in out of sheer annoyance, Hermione decides that first and foremost, she has to take care of herself.

***

The next time Pansy uses the word “Mudblood,” Professor McGonagall has a fit.

Hermione doesn't even remember who she was talking about – some boy from Beauxbatons, most likely, or maybe about how Durmstrang only accepts pure-bloods. Possibly both.

McGonagall is so agitated she forgets she should probably invite Pansy to her office, and she gives her detention followed by a five-minute lecture right there in the Great Hall, much to the amusement of those Gryffindors who happen to be within earshot.

Much to her own surprise, Hermione discovers she isn't even upset by the twenty points they just lost. She keeps her eyes firmly on her plate, careful to make sure that her roommate doesn't notice her small smile, and discovers that, among other things, being a Mudblood means you learn to hold grudges.

***

The word “Mudblood” on a Ministry leaflet looks like a death sentence, and Hermione doesn't hesitate for a second.

Later, much later, she manages to steal a newspaper, and she learns what happens to those who did hesitate; she reads about hearings, dementors and broken wands, but what's most horrifying is that she finds nothing about what happens afterwards. 

At night, she clutches her wand like it was a knife, and dreams idiotic dreams of Albus Dumbledore being alive, or Harry Potter being the Chosen One. She knows him from school, of course, even though she's on much better terms with his girlfriend than with the famous Potter himself.

It's not that hard to outwit the Snatchers, who are definitely not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but it's exhausting, fearful, and lonely. Eventually, Hermione gets used to everything: to sleeping for three hours at a time, and spending her days improving the protective charms she learned a long time ago, not really thinking she'd ever use them.

She isn't sure what it teaches her about being a Mudblood, but she's pretty damn sure she'd rather never had learned it at all.

***

Hermione is twenty seven years old when she decides to run for a minor office in Magical Law Enforcement.

She wants to make a difference, of course, but she's smart enough not to mention it to anyone, so instead she speaks of career paths, of better money and personal development. Sometimes, just to amuse herself, she listens to her father's advice about campaigning, and then promptly ignores it all; her parents might've never discovered that the wizarding world isn't simply the Muggle world with funny clothes, but Hermione knows better.

Or maybe she's wrong. Maybe both words are, in fact, exactly the same, and the only difference between them is that Hermione Granger is a Mudblood only in one of them.

“Are you sure it's a good idea to run this year?” asks Terry Boot during a strategy-planning lunch with her. “The way things are right now, I'm not sure they'd appoint a Muggle-born witch.”

Hermione laughs, because Terry has always been so good with words, so nice and polite, good manners incarnated. But she, too, wasn't born yesterday, and she can translate what he's saying, peel off the layers of strategy, and get to the meaning itself. “You're a Mudblood,” he's not saying. “It means that people are afraid of you.”

She turns his words around in her head, almost tasting them on her tongue. In a way, they're old news – on some level, she's known this from the very beginning, just like she's known that being a Mudblood can never mean just one thing. She smiles at the thought of throwing it all in Terry's face, but she knows she won't. He's giving her information, and in their world, information is too precious to waste. Terry has given her a weapon, and now she knows this beyond any doubt: people are afraid of her.

She sure hopes they are.


End file.
